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-DAVID LAIRD, Lieutenant-Governor of
North-West Territories, and Special
Indian Commissioner.
-JAMES F. MACLEOD, Lieut.-Colonel,
Com. N.W.M.P., and Special Indian
Commissioner.
-CHAPO-MEXICO, or Crowfoot,
-Head Chief of the South
Blackfeet. MATOSE-APIW, or Old Sun,
-Head Chief of the North
Blackfeet. STAMISCOTOCAR, or Bull Head.
-Head Chief of the Sarcees. MEKASTO, or Red Crow
-Head Chief of the South Bloods NATOSE-ONISTORS, or Medicine
Calf
-SOTENAH, or Rainy Chief,
Head Chief of the North
Bloods.
The Treaty was signed
at the Blackfoot Crossing
of the Bow River, at the present-day
Siksika Nation reserve,
aproximately 100 km East
of Calgary.
Historical background,
Area and the People
When Treaty Seven was signed in 1877, it became the last in a series of agreements concluded between the Government of Canada and the Indians of the North-West during the decade of the 1870s. Upon its conclusion, more than twenty years would pass before another treaty was made. Treaty Seven, then, completed the task which the government had set out to accomplish after it acquired control of Rupert's Land in 1870.
From the government's perspective, the need for Treaty Seven was immediate and simple. As part of the terms of bringing British Columbia into Confederation in 1871, the Canadian government had promised to build a trans-continental railway within ten years. Such a line would have to traverse the newly-acquired western territories, through land still nominally in control of Indian tribes. Huge land concessions would need to be offered to the company building the railway and later, the existence of the line would encourage large scale immigration to the western prairies.
The First Nations People living on the land that were to become southern Albertan Natives. The First Nations were eager to sign Treaty 7 in 1877 with the British Crown because disease, reduction of bison herd sizes, and increasing encroachments on traditional lands had dramatically changed life on the plains of the northwest. In 1870, smallpox swept across the plains, devastating the populations of plains people as an earlier epidemic in 1837 had done. Thousands died, and in such a weakened state the Blackfoot, Nakoda, and Tsuu T’ina felt particularly vulnerable.